This invention relates to a cut and scored blank for forming a tray pallet, a preform formed by erecting the cut and scored blank, and the tray pallet formed from the blank and preform.
Material handling has developed into a field in which substantial attention is given to the efficient assembly and movement of quantities of goods to be stored through the use of equipment of various types. Lift trucks of various types are among the types of material handling equipment used, for example, in warehouses and the like for handling goods of a wide variety of types. Certain types of lift trucks, known as clamp trucks, are used for handling materials which are consolidated into packages such as bales. Clamp trucks generally engage a package to be handled by gripping the package between a pair of clamps with an action similar to that of a pair of hands held with open palms in parallel, spaced positions and moved one toward the other.
Certain types of materials which may be consolidated for handling are relatively lightweight, such as paperboard blanks or foamed plastic products. In consolidating such materials heretofore, packages have been placed on pallets for handling by materials handling equipment such as lift trucks.
Conventionally, consolidation of materials such as paperboard blanks or foamed plastic products for palletized handling has used pallets of the platform type capable of receiving the forks of a fork lift truck therebeneath or pallets of the type known as slip pallets which require a special lift truck. Platform pallets are relatively heavy and expensive, and are more readily justified in handling materials which are more difficult to consolidate than are paperboard blanks and plastic products. Slip pallets, while less expensive than platform pallets, are limited in usefulness to particular weight and size ranges of consolidated materials, and thus are not generally useful with materials of a wide range of package sizes and weights.